From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

Okay, first draft of a man page. Dumped the rendered output to file via:

MANWIDTH=74 man -l mastermind.man | col -bx > mastermind.txt

I notice that using formatting macro '.Dt MASTERMIND 6'
(6 being the section for games), the string 'BSD Games Manual' is added.

I can't be too far off the mark with the man page as its rendering correctly
in Mint/Alpine/OpenBSD uniformly. 'Nearly certain' I've covered everything
but maybe the reader will spot something I missed...


MASTERMIND(6) BSD Games Manual MASTERMIND(6)

NAME
mastermind (and Bulls & Cows via moo)

SYNOPSIS
mastermind [seed]

DESCRIPTION
mastermind is a terminal based code-breaking game. To win, guess
the 4-digit secret code within a limited number of attempts. Visual
feedback is given after each guess.

If the program is named rCymoorCO or a symlink named rCymoorCO, the program
runs in Bulls & Cows mode and prints feedback in the form rCy0B2CrCO
(zero bulls, two cows).

SEED
If an 8-digit seed is supplied, it's used to regenerate the secret
code deterministically, allowing replay of a given game.

If no seed is provided, a seed is generated using the current time.

In any event, on exit the seed is printed to standard error.

KEYS
4-digit number followed by return.

Q Quit the game.

H Show the help screen.

EXAMPLES
Play a random seed: mastermind

Play a named seed: mastermind 67402754

Play a seed via redirection: mastermind < seed

Save a seed via redirection: mastermind 2>seed

EXIT STATUS
mastermind returns 0 on success and 1 if an error occurs.

AUTHOR
Michael Sanders

BSD January 2, 2026 BSD
--
:wq
Mike Sanders
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 06:11:44 -0000 (UTC), Michael Sanders wrote:

I can't be too far off the mark with the man page as its rendering
correctly in Mint/Alpine/OpenBSD uniformly.

Also worth checking how PDF output looks. This is one way to flush out
rCL-rCY versus rCL\-rCY confusion ...
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On 1/3/26 7:11 AM, Michael Sanders wrote:

Okay, first draft of a man page.

I love manpages! Thank you for writing one

On the same topic, I find basic roff a little rough, so
I evaluated a few options over time.

My personal rank:
1. openbsd's "mdoc"
2. perl POD -> pod2man
3. asciidoc (hint: this is how git manpages are built)
--
High Crew
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 08:38:52 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence DrCOOliveiro wrote:

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 06:11:44 -0000 (UTC), Michael Sanders wrote:

I can't be too far off the mark with the man page as its rendering
correctly in Mint/Alpine/OpenBSD uniformly.

Also worth checking how PDF output looks. This is one way to flush out rCL-rCY versus rCL\-rCY confusion ...

Yes I certainly will check that Lawrence (didn't even know it was an issue).
--
:wq
Mike Sanders
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 09:59:25 +0100, highcrew wrote:

On 1/3/26 7:11 AM, Michael Sanders wrote:

Okay, first draft of a man page.

I love manpages! Thank you for writing one

On the same topic, I find basic roff a little rough, so
I evaluated a few options over time.

My personal rank:
1. openbsd's "mdoc"
2. perl POD -> pod2man
3. asciidoc (hint: this is how git manpages are built)

Hey-hey. Oh yeah, glad to have at least dipped a toe into
the system. Not nearly as fussy to mess around with as I'd thought.

So what did you write your man page(s) about?
C'mon spill the beans. =)
--
:wq
Mike Sanders
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

Michael Sanders <porkchop@invalid.foo> writes:

Okay, first draft of a man page. Dumped the rendered output to file via:

MANWIDTH=74 man -l mastermind.man | col -bx > mastermind.txt

I notice that using formatting macro '.Dt MASTERMIND 6'
(6 being the section for games), the string 'BSD Games Manual' is added.

I can't be too far off the mark with the man page as its rendering correctly >in Mint/Alpine/OpenBSD uniformly. 'Nearly certain' I've covered everything >but maybe the reader will spot something I missed...

MASTERMIND(6) BSD Games Manual MASTERMIND(6)

NAME
mastermind (and Bulls & Cows via moo)

SYNOPSIS
mastermind [seed]

Generally looks pretty good. Here's an example with a table:

$ MANWIDTH=80 man docs/manpages/vsim.man
VSIM(1) General Commands Manual VSIM(1)

NAME
vsim - Burroughs Medium Systems/Unisys V-Series mainframe simulator

SYNOPSIS
vsim [-a architecture] [-d] [-l logfile] [-t tracefile] [-L libpath]
[-e startup-file] [-v] [-m memsize] [-V]

DESCRIPTION
vsim is a simulator for the Burroughs Medium Systems (AKA the Unisys V-
Series) mainframe computer system. It simulates the latest generation
and supports the MCPVS 3.0 series operating systems. Some amount of
MCPVS 2.0 support also exists, but the MCPVS 2.0 operating system is not
available for testing.
MCPVI, MCPIX and MCPVS 1.0 (and all prior operating systems) are not
currently supported.

A display device must be associated with the simulator to handle
operator input to and output from the MCP. The t27 utility provides a
faithful emulation of an Unisys T27 block-mode terminal. See t27(1)
for further details. The startup command file generally specifies the
mix of Operator Display Terminal ODT and Operator Control Station OCS
devices connected through simulated UNILINE or Universal Console DLPs,
which listen for a TCP connection from the t27(1) or vrje(1) utilities.

At a minimum, an MCP disk must be defined, the number of disk (100-byte
media) and pack (180-byte media) devices that can be defined is limited
by the size of the Master Control Program internal device tables, the
simulator supports 16 devices per htseq (Host Transfer Sequential) DLP
with a maximum of 64 DLPs (which is the maximum number of channels
supported by the MCP), for a total of 1024 disk and/or pack devices.

OPTIONS
-a architecture
Specify the architecture to be used for the simulation. If not
specified, the architecture must be specified using the so arch
simulator command prior to executing most other commands. See
the table below for the legal architecture names. The
architecture name is case insensitive.

-d Enable debug output to the trace file.

-l logfile
Specify the destination for log output messages from the
simulator. If this option is not specified, the output will be
directed to stderr.

-t tracefile
Specify the destination for trace (debug) output messages from
the simulator. If this option is not specified, and processor
tracing is enabled using the -d option or the bt family of
simulator commands, output will be directed to stderr.

-L libpath
Specify the directory that contains the shared objects for the
system I/O adapters, known as Data-Link Processors (DLPs). The
initial bootstrap program V3SYST is also located in this
directory and is used to bootstrap the MCP for all architecture
types.

-e startup-file
This option specifies a file containing a list of simulator
commands to run immediately after the simulator is started.
After the final command has been executed, the simulator prompt
will appear and the simulator is available for interactive use.
If a command in the startup file fails, the following commands
will not be executed. See EXAMPLES below for an example of a
startup file. Blank lines and lines starting with the
octothorpe character will be ignored.

-v This flag will cause each command executed from the startup file
specified by the -e option to be printed on the standard output
after execution. If this flag is not set, commands executed from
the startup file will execute silently.

-m memsize
The size of memory, in bytes, to assign to the simulated machine.

-V Display the simulator version information.

The following processor architectures are supported:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Arch CPUs Mem (Digits) Notes |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| V310 1 20,000,000 No fetch/execute overlap, slower than V340 |
| V340 1 40,000,000 No fetch/execute overlap, faster than V310 |
| V380 1 80,000,000 F/E Overlap, B4955 w/new microcode |
| V410 1 80,000,000 Equivalent to V340, much smaller cpu cabinet |
| V430 1 160,000,000 Equivalent to V380, much smaller cpu cabinet |
| V460 2 160,000,000 Two V430 processors, single cpu cabinet |
| V480 3 160,000,000 Never built, three V430 processors |
| V490 4 160,000,000 Never built, four V430 processors |
| V510 1 160,000,000 Low end V500 series |
| V530 1 320,000,000 Single Processor V500 CPU |
| V560 2 320,000,000 Dual-processor V500 CPU, most powerful sold |
| V580 3 640,000,000 Not shipped, three V530 CPU (Two CPU cabinets) |
| V590 4 640,000,000 Not shipped, four V530 CPU (Two CPU cabinets |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| V591 5 640,000,000 Simulator only, five V500 CPUs |
| V592 6 640,000,000 Simulator only, six V500 CPUs |
| V593 7 640,000,000 Simulator only, seven V500 CPUs |
| V594 8 640,000,000 Simulator only, eight V500 CPUs |
| V595 9 640,000,000 Simulator only, nine V500 CPUs |
| V596 10 640,000,000 Simulator only, ten V500 CPUs |
| V597 11 640,000,000 Simulator only, eleven V500 CPUs |
| V598 12 640,000,000 Simulator only, twelve V500 CPUs |
| V599 13 640,000,000 Simulator only, thirteen V500 CPUs |
| V59A 14 640,000,000 Simulator only, fourteen V500 CPUs |
| V59B 15 640,000,000 Simulator only, fifteen V500 CPUs |
| V59C 16 640,000,000 Simulator only, sixteen V500 CPUs |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+

LIMITATIONS
While the simulator supports up to 16 processors for the V500 series
systems, the MCP was only qualified on dual processor systems. The MCP
is designed to support up to 16 CPU's, and will correctly schedule jobs
on all CPUs in a 16 CPU configuration, but various commands and output
messages will only show two or four CPU's. The system idle time
calculations will be incorrect.

ENVIRONMENT
The VSIM_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable can be used to designate the
location of the directory containing shared objects which implement
Data-Link Processor (DLP) Input/Output functionality for the supported
DLP devices.

SEE ALSO
b974, ischub, vrje, t27

EXAMPLES
The following is a sample startup command file for a medium-scale V380
configuration used to coldstart the system.

#
# Coldstart Unit Test Configuration
#
# Set the maximum memory size to 80,000,000 digits
#
so limit 80md
#
# Set the architecture to V380
#
so arch v380
#
# Define the Input/Output channel configuration
channel 1 reader
control 1/0 load carddecks/coldstart.crd
channel 3 buffered_printer
control 3/0 load printers/prn_03_output
channel 6 gcr
control 6/0 load magtapes/mcp.tap
control 6/1 load magtapes/cobol.tap
control 6/2 load magtapes/cande.tap
control 6/5 loadw magtapes/test.tap
channel 10 odt
control 10/4 listen 2510
channel 15 uniline
control 15/0 loadfw stc
control 15/0 listen port 2515
channel 16 htseq
control 16/0 loadfw AD
control 16/0 create diskpacks/206pack1.img 206S
control 16/1 create diskpacks/682pack2.img 682S
control 16/2 create diskpacks/207LAK0.img 207S LAK
control 16/15 create diskpacks/207LAK1.img 207S LAK
channel 21 punch
control 21/0 stacker main carddecks/pch21_main.crd
control 21/0 stacker aux carddecks/pch21_aux.crd
control 21/0 stacker error carddecks/pch21_error.crd
so odt 10
so mcp 16/15
load system
run

And the corresponding coldstart configuration deck for the Master
Control Program:

HOSTNAME SCV380
DLP 1 CRD
UNIT 1/0 CRD SAVED
DLP 3 PRN
UNIT 3/0 PRN256 PRN
DLP 6 GCR
UNIT 6/0 GCR
UNIT 6/1 GCR
UNIT 6/2 GCR
UNIT 6/5 GCR
DLP 10 CONSOLE
UNIT 10/4 PRISPO ODT LEVEL 9 HLSPO AD DEF
DLP 15 UNILINE UST3BH
UNIT 15/0 VRJE RJE
DLP 16 PACK HSTLAD
PACK 16/0
PACK 16/1
DISK 16/2 ID 2 SUBSYSTEM 2 DEFAULT
DISK 16/15 ID 1 SUBSYSTEM 1
DLP 21 PCH
UNIT 21/0 PCH
SECURITY SYSTEM/OPERATOR DFSC
CONTROL DEBUG MCP
USE BOJ
USE DCOM
USE EOJ
USE TPLB
USE STOQ
USE DUMP DISK
USE PBD
USE PCH
USE SLOG AUTO 10000 WRAP
USE RLOG AUTO 10000 WRAP
USE ZIPM
STOP

October 3, 2010 VSIM(1)


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On Sat, 3 Jan 2026 09:59:25 +0100, highcrew wrote:

On the same topic, I find basic roff a little rough, so I evaluated
a few options over time.

My personal rank:
1. openbsd's "mdoc"
2. perl POD -> pod2man
3. asciidoc (hint: this is how git manpages are built)

Interesting, no mention of tex/latex. ;)

I did try that once or twice, got a whole lot of warnings (and no
usable output as I recall), couldnrCOt easily figure out what was wrong,
gave up, went back to Markdown.

Man pages with groff, on the other hand, have been relatively painless
to write. I can get output that looks just like other peoplerCOs man
pages. And I have the option for nicely-typeset output (e.g. PDF) from
the same source, which is even nicer.

(In fairness, I do use Mathjax in Jupyter notebooks. This is just the maths-notation subset of latex, which gives me reasonable results with
minimal work.)
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On 1/3/26 3:13 PM, Michael Sanders wrote:

So what did you write your man page(s) about?
C'mon spill the beans. =)

I wrote a bunch of man pages for open source projects
I'm the author of.

About perl POD, I even went as far as writing manpages
for work. I don't expect anyone to have read it though
:D Noobs!

Note that Perl POD was used to write manpages for a C
program, not for a Perl program.
--
High Crew
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.lang.c

On Sat, 03 Jan 2026 18:57:21 GMT, Scott Lurndal wrote:

Generally looks pretty good. Here's an example with a table:

[...]

Thanks Scott! Interesting man page.
--
:wq
Mike Sanders
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2